Mobile phone recycling programme launched

Nokia Pakistan initiates mobile phone recycling campaign to encourage recycling of redundant sets.

KARACHI: Nokia Pakistan on Wednesday initiated a mobile phone recycling campaign across the country in a bid to encourage users to recycle their old phones with Nokia, regardless of the make of the redundant sets.

“Various studies indicate that unused equipment can be found in many consumer desk drawers,” said Adeel Hashmi, Nokia’s Country Communications Manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan. “If every Nokia user recycled just one phone at the end of its life, together we would save nearly 125,000 tons of raw material,” he added.

According to a global consumer survey conducted by the company, only three per cent of people recycle their mobile phones while 74 per cent said that they do not even think about recycling their phones. Moreover, a whopping 50 per cent were not even aware that it was possible to recycle mobile phones.

Hashmi explained that Nokia has nine customer care centres in Pakistan where people can drop-off old phones which are no longer in use. After being collected in Lahore, the phones will be shipped to Hungary where a recycling company is already processing phones brought in from 85 other countries.

“We want to help overcome some of the barriers to recycling phones,” Nokia Care Manager Reza Burney told The Express Tribune. He said that many people worry about losing numbers, photos and other sensitive information but pointed out that there are ways to safeguard such data and asserted that the company is working to raise awareness of these methods.

For free?

Starting a mobile phone recycling programme in a country where no such facility exists is indeed a noteworthy accomplishment but it is difficult to gauge whether it will be met with success. With vibrant markets for used phones in major urban centres, the typical user is likely to dispose of not-in-use sets in exchange for monetary return – even if it is a few hundred rupees.

Moreover, mobile phone repair shops are often willing to purchase ‘dead’ phones for a fraction of the price on hopes of salvaging usable parts. A simple search on Google also reveals that many companies in other countries offer token amounts in return for turning in old phones for recycling in order to incentivise the practice.

Although Nokia declined to comment on the response they hoped to receive in Pakistan, Burney was hopeful that more and more people would make use of the facility as they became more aware of environmental issues.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2010.